If You Give a Mouse a Fribble...

Friendly's and Fribbles. Oh my gosh, the memories that conjures up inside my head. But when I think about Fribbles (mine were vanilla), I can't help but see the small squared sandwich, the hamburger too. That burger, to me, was something to die for with it's slightly red middle encased in a warm grilled cheese. Who thought of that anyhow? Marrying my two faves: the grilled cheese and the burger in one little warm house. Yum.

Today...MacDonald reigns. And honestly, it did back then when it was just emerging too. We had no burger joints, no shakes, there really was no fast food. It was all slow and freshly prepared and without a doubt much better for you. But then Friendly's came along, and the high school crowd jumped right in. Friendly's had booths, and you could linger over a shake, and that was exactly what we needed back then.

I think about all the high school dances and our trips to Friendly's and the Knotty Pine (Diner) too, and my friends, Debbie and Diane talking late into the night. I remember recapping the evening and almost never wanting to go home. I think about our mini-skirts and boots and our bell bottomed blue jeans, the music, the strobe lights and how giggly and fancy-free we were. In one short year, we'd be off at college and what an enormous shift that would bring.

The point of it all, though, for me as a writer, is the transition of thought to idea, of idea to emotion, of emotion to time travel and how the clear and authentic details resonnate in me. Emotion drives scenes, but details live in the underlayers beneath. Drilling for those strong, authentic details and tapping into the emotions that live there is always the hardest part for me!

I guess the lesson here, lies in the Fribble...not just any milkshake, because mine had a very wide straw. It was frothy and smooth with just the barest lump of vanilla cream (icemilk actually, I think). That Fribble, in its wide clear glass sat on the table...waiting between many long sips, while Deb and Diane and I pieced together all those moments of our life. And once that long, laughable slurp was taken, once we'd picked up our keys and headed home, we'd forged a formidable alliance that no boy, no other group of gossippy girls would ever want to deal with!

Another New Dawning: Keeping the Writing on Track

This morning, I sit here with my cup of hot coffee and I look out the window to see a fresh blanket of snow has covered the ground. I hear the plows out there scraping the roads, paving the way for the morning commute, but I'm not worried about that right now. I know I have an extra ninety minutes to write. Some mornings I journal, mostly to get anything that's playing in my head out there on the page. I want no distractions to defeat me in my work.

But this morning, I'm free of distractions...pretty much anyway. I did check in on school closings, and so I was aware of the morning headlines too. But I didn't linger. I had my assignment in mind.

Setting a deadline has been a great thing for me. It's given me a purpose and forced me to look at things I'd never looked at before: word and page count specifically. I never wanted to be so glossy, so caught up in the specifics of pushing forward like that with my book. One of my writing partners has been nudging me along, though. She's given me a deadline for the first time with this book. Last time we sat down together, I told her I didn't think our deadline was realistic. I mean really...the end of February? C'mon. I have a full time job to do.

She stood firm. I objected...you have this book almost written, I said. You know all your plotlines, your writing comes out perfect from the start. She laughed at me. Yeah, right, she said. Who has it all figured out, really?

I was thinking about that today...as I approached my own work. I realize the pitfall I'd taken and stayed in for years. The US and THEM theory. Others look so great, so polished, so complete. It's been my critic living large and well-inhabited in my brain. I haven't been working, really working on a regular basis, producing pages...I'd been back-tracking again, trying to polish and perfect. So today, as the dawn was breaking, I was pushing my seven not-so perfect pages out there. And I found, just like  I always have, that a lot of gifts come when characters are placed in an uncomfortable situation and allowed the time to interact. Tonight, I may change it up a bit...but tomorrow, I know, I've still got to push forward if I want to make some kind of reasonable point of completion on this.

Life, writing...go figure; an actual deadline would be the thing to get me unstuck! Progress, not perfection is just what I need.

A Welcome Stranger in the Woods

What will inspire you in 2012? Notice...I say 'will.' Are you thinking ahead, standing still or living in the moment like me? I like to live my life in minutes and hours, but sometimes even I have to plan ahead, pack a bag, take a leap and prepare for what's to come.

I've been told writing is like driving in a snowstorm. Sometimes you can only see as far as your headlights will allow. But more often, we can see inklings beyond the headlight's rays, and that is what we are called to do.

If I were to hold up the mirror to myself as a writer, I'd have to say, I've been forging ahead and standing still at the same time. Writing requires a deep well of unrelenting thought. Characters have to be wrestled to the floor, shook out and torn apart almost until they bleed. Sounds graphic and torturous, right? Well...the process itself is. I am haunted and enthused, delighted and annoyed and most often plagued by that awful gnawing doubt that keeps me paralyzed in procrastination, stuck in the quicksand of thought.

Right now, I'm forging ahead. I'm inspired because I've forced myself to revisit and remap my characters' goals, motivations and desires. Instead of writing into a snowstorm, tangible images and ideas have begun to emerge again. And unlike this beautiful stranger in the woods, the patterns and ideas are no longer a big surprise to me. So, just for today, I'm grabbing on...and letting that little bit of inspiration carry me!

Cynsations: Helen Hemphill to Serve as Director of Highlights ...

Cynsations: Helen Hemphill to Serve as Director of Highlights ...: Helen Hemphill is taking over the directorship of the Whole Novel Workshop for the Highlights Foundation in 2012 and has an amazing lineup...

I came across this posting today, and couldn't help but think about my time at Chautauqua last summer. I made so many connections with really special people, like-minded in a creative way. Helen Hemphill was my mentor that week and I was fortunate to learn a great deal from her. At the time, one of my point of view character's narrative was written largely in verse. Helen helped me to craft my writing  in short visual bursts, rather than stretching the narrative out in a thinner elongated way. She encouraged me to read and study Shark Girl, by Kelly Bingham, a colleague of hers from Vermont College. It's a wonderfully well-written novel, which apparently received a great deal of acclaim from the faculty there.

Since my time with Helen, I've come to gather all sorts of ideas and thoughts about my work. Over the course of the past year, I've taken all that I've learned and turned myself inside out for a bit. I've hunkered down and really tried to see what it is that I envision for my work. The character I'd written in verse, was not really resonating with me. I found she was sounding just a little too cryptic to me. So...back to the drawing board on that one. The good news is nothing in writing is ever lost. I know for sure that verse character has another home in another book that will inevitably have its day in the sun.

I highly recommend Chautauqua and the Highlights Foundation Whole Novel Workshops. The mentorship is strong, the workshops are deeply meaningful, and the food is beyond belief! 

The Dawn of a New Day

For the better part of the past month, I've been on the road, driving anywhere from 6 to 12 hours a day, making my way across this great land of ours. I've pretty much abandoned Small Circles and Teach Spot, my two normal blogs to chronicle about the journey for a small local online news service, The Newtown Patch. It's been a wonderful opportunity to expand my writing horizons and to share my work with a local population of interested readers.

But...Small Circles is still my home niche. It gives me a place to reflect on the people in my life and the creative universe that surrounds us all. For the past twenty-five days, I've expanded my circles, meeting people from a wealth of varying backgrounds...learning a little about them through conversation, and also in doing what writers do...listening in, because, well, we're nosy! I'm always looking for something new, and a few juicy characters to splash on the written page!

Just outside the Painted Desert, at a quick rest stop in Cameron, AZ, I stumbled upon a very small craft shop. I'd been looking for a turquoise necklace...nothing elaborate, and cost was a serious consideration, since we'd planned this long journey, knowing it was a huge expense in itself. I met a Navajo women, named Denise, whose small corner encompassed pottery, necklaces, earrings and all sorts of beautifully designed Native American crafts. I was struck as much by her work as I was by her beauty. She had gorgeous light tan skin, dark eyes and glossy dark brown hair. She was clearly dressed for the day, wearing one of her own creations, a beautiful three stringed turquoise necklace. I approached somewhat cautiously, because, as always, I do not want to engage until I'm sure I want to buy. This is the same in any store for me. I never want to get myself trapped.

Denise was a different story, though, I sensed it right from the start. She asked me what I was interested in, and I told her...something simple, yet elegant. She showed me a necklace on display that she'd made the day before. Two strands...of turquoise beads...varying in size a little along the neckline, with varying marks and impurities in the stone that made the piece stand out among the others. She told me the beads came from the Royston and/or Kingman mines. At first that meant nothing to me. But then, I realized, she wanted me to know more...to value the work. Both Royston and Kingman are mines from the state of Nevada. The turquoise is a deeper, darker aqua and the impurities have a brownish goldish tint. I loved the beads, her work...and loved her soft-spoken, gentle ways. I told her I'd like to bring my husband in, that it'd just take me a minute, as he's in a wheel chair. She told me to just take the beads...not to put him through all that. So I did. I took the beads out to the parking lot...and of course, my husband loved them.

When I returned, I bought the beads (for a third the cost of others I'd seen...which were lesser in quality for sure), and she gave me her card with all her information...Native Expressions, it said. She wanted to be sure that if anything went wrong with my necklace, I wouldn't regret my purchase at all. I too, am a person of my word, and so I loved this about her. I scanned the austere shop...only three other craftswomen set up with small tables in a room that could've held twenty or more. It was not nearly as luxurious as the shop next door, but Denise, to me, was another creative, working her craft one bead at a time along the road. I left there, tickled by the fact, that here she is on the outskirts of the Painted Desert, in a minimalist desert landscape as remote and quiet as I'd seen, bringing beauty to those of us who may never travel that path again...but enlivening the understandings that come and go between our two worlds.

Meeting Along the Shore

What is the true measure of a person...their life, their loves, their quirks or all the stories that surround their corner of the universe? Who do we count as important, the ones that touch us so deeply they fill a crevice in our hearts? When you leave, will I reach you again? Why are we here, anyway? So many questions, so few answers. But somehow now, I don't feel compelled to know.

Words and stories, faces and lives weave their way through our existence each and every day. Do I stop? Notice? Sometimes. After all, I call myself a writer. I am interested, curious. But not always. Am I a willing participant in the lives of those I hold dear? Do I come, or do I need to be dragged? Mindful in the moment? Some of the time, I guess.

Recently, I was given a golden opportunity. A clear chance to be really present in the very dear and painful last moments of a very, very special person in my life. Words, to me, have such great power. But I realize I don't always hang on every word. This time, I was given the presence of mind to know...to listen...to witness and to cherish every last word that was said.

But eventually...there were few, if any words at all. The eyes became the true windows to it all. The heart communicated in silence...a gentle grip, a tender look, the small acceptance of love. Life's end, just like its beginning, is a thing that gives me great pause. For we are all witnesses to one another. Here, not for ourselves, but for that which happens when one steps in and carries the other...into this life, or out onto another shore.

Whispering Wind

Driving around early this morning, inspired by the little things...cows in the field, old corn-stalks--dangling remnants of last year's crop, and the clear blue sky towering above. On the radio comes an old fave of mine...one that was so overplayed back in the day: "Stairway to Heaven." I was such a Zepellin maniac back then!

I worked at a local grocery store and saved just about every cent I made for music, first, and clothes too, which took a close second for sure. I'd come home, run upstairs and blare that vinyl on my sad excuse for a stereo. Drove my poor brother crazy...he, after all was of the Elvis generation or maybe even Frank Sinatra, I honestly don't know. We were ten years apart. I was 18, and he, at 28 was stuck with the job of raising an angst-filled teenage girl. Led Zepellin and Mountain too, did that in a way that nobody else could.

But today? I heard it all in a different way, like the artists had changed the words. There was no angst, and no confusion...just a message I could use in my life.

"There are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there's still time to change the road you're on."

Still time! Not only is there clock time, but there's the time of the spirit...that remains still once in an actual while: that rested spirit, one that stops, looks up and wonders at clouds, chases the dreams that come only in moments, and not in weeks and years. I realize how quick I am to measure myself by accomplishments in the time of man and the world. In my life I am also trying to take two paths at once. It doesn't work that way.

So, today, I took a seat and looked up at the huge white pine, the one that towers over my cottage. I studied its wide scape of powerful branches, and witnessed our partnered hawks building another year's nest. The breeze scattered magnolia's elegant white petals on the lawn. And for the very first time, I thought of that other road.

Sitting there all quiet and still...I found an answer to a story I've been working on for three years. Of course. It came to me, just as it always does. But in its coming, this time came a lesson too. For it's only in the stillness that these inevitable whispers can be heard.